Thoughts on Today's Microsoft Presentation

This is the most interesting thing Microsoft announced today. It's not a VR (Virtual Reality) visor, it's an AR (Augmented Reality) visor.

Microsoft is throwing around the word: Hologram everywhere, but it's really just a 3D heads up display.

They demoed and insinuated Tony Stark level 3D image manipulation. But it won't be that good.

This whole device comes down to timing and price. If it's $300 it's going to be quite the tech toy this Christmas, if it's $1,000 it's a footnote novelty most people will never try much less buy, if it's $175-- it'll change the world.

The other cool thing Microsoft showed. It's an 84" 4K Windows Surface tablet to hang on your wall. You won't be able to afford one, but if you work in a really cool office, you'll be constantly fighting your coworkers to schedule a meeting in a room that has one.

I live in a Google world, so I'm not likely to leave Chrome anytime soon. This will have some nice features for offices though, so hooray for office people who will likely continue to live in an alternate Microsoft-centric world from the rest of us at home.

Nice that it will be a free upgrade for Win7 users as well as Win8 users. I'll likely update my 8" Dell Windows Tablet, but I don't know about my current desktop. I'll probably just need to plan on getting a new desktop computer in another 18 months.

Cortana is neat, but I doubt it will work any better than Siri, Google Now or Xbox One, so beyond the novelty, I doubt I'll use it. They should keep moving forward with this, but voice always seems perpetually 10 years out from being really useful.

At this point, I'd be much happier with a really good conversational query/answer/execute interface that I could engage with text and keyboard. I'd love to see them work on that before they try to figure out all the problems of text to speech.

State of the Union Bingo

The State of the Union is tonight. I've once again updated my State of the Union Bingo Cards. Click the link and refresh the page as often as needed to generate new random cards. When the word, phrase or action happens you can cross off the space. Some people use it as a drinking game too.

Gas is too cheap

I watched this news report on the the PBS Nightly Business Report yesterday. They dedicated the whole show to Gas and Oil being too cheap. I get all the arguments as to why if gas and oil stays this cheap how it upsets the balance of things. The thing that strikes me though, is noone looks at it from a higher level.

Gas and Oil are valuable and useful things. Sure it'd be better to be on cleaner fuel sources, but that doesn't take away from their usefulness. You can make them into plastics, you can burn them for energy, you can run farm equipment to produce food for the world.

So putting aside the environmental concerns of burning fossil fuels for a second. The problem on the business show is that we have too much of a useful thing and having too much of that thing may wreck our economy?

Shouldn't we look at the underlying system? We may need to fix a system that crashes when too much of a good thing is available. That may not be the best system.

I could see a system crashing if you don't have enough of something you need, but a system crashing when you have too much of something you need? That's a weird system.

Social Media

I love his line about Facebook: "...as and awkward family dinner party we can't really leave." That is a perfect summation of Facebook I think.

The author of the above speaks highly of Instagram. I know a lot of people like Instagram. Personally I find it the least social of the 3. It's more broadcast than interaction in my opinion.

The kid (I can call him a kid right? I'm old enough to get away with that?) doesn't get Twitter. I can explain what Twitter is: It's a virtual office watercooler (something a 19 year old probably doesn't have much use for, since they're in school still). And like the office watercooler, you really don't want to talk about anything too offensive, state too many strong opinions, and for the most part it's safest to just talk about the current football game. Oh, and you can say nice things about whatever work project someone is doing, or agree with whatever they have to say about music/movies or tv. With any luck, you can talk to some people in your related field or interest. But don't try to talk to anyone too far above your station or outside your clique, that'd be like starting a conversation with a VP at the office restroom urinal. Office-like hierarchies and tribe mechanics are in effect.

Let's Go Surfing

— a five percent decline since last year, and the largest year-over-year drop in nearly a decade. Most importantly, it's the lowest attendance figure since 1995, suggesting dire news for a film industry still struggling with digital piracy.

Sigh. It has nothing to do with piracy. Theaters keep getting more expensive. The experience is generally has gotten no better in the last decade, and in-home entertainment options are greater than ever. It's a wonder they've only had a 5% drop. It's a testament to people's desire to get out of the house that attendance has only dropped than small amount, I think.

More Tech Thoughts

Home

There’s lots of connected home stuff coming out. Electronic locks are supposed to become big. I have no interest in these, maybe in six years I'll think differently with a young kid, but for now, this isn't a home automation tech I'm interested in being an early adopter of. Beyond the Thermostat and Lights, I still struggle with whether any automation is really worth it for the average person. Phone/Internet connected Thermostat and Lights are cool though, even if it's hard to see upgrading present Nest or Hue lights anytime soon in the next 5 to 10 years.

iPad

Barring accident, I doubt I'll replace my iPad 2 in 2015. It's still a solid device 3 and a half years in.

Phone and Smartwatch

Cracked my Samsung S4 screen over Christmas. It still works at the moment, so I'm looking to hold onto it until the Samsung S6 comes out in March-ish. Unless an Android Wear Smartwatch comes out with a camera, I'll probably continue to primarily use my Gear 1, which keeps me in the Samsung ecosystem a little longer. Not that I mind. The S4 has been a great phone, and Jenn's S5 has been good too.

Voice

I'm hoping the Xbox One/Kinect voice control gets a little better next year. Also interested in seeing the Amazon Echo or anything in that category that Google might come out with to compete. It'd be interesting to see more conversational information delivery, but since they don't really have this in text yet, I doubt it's coming in any robust way to voice any time soon either.

VR headsets

I'm excited about this space, but I'm guessing if anything much happens with it in 2015, it'll be toward fall of 2015, or possibly even later. Until then, hobbyist experiences like Google Cardboard will probably be about it.

3D Printing

After a year of having a 3D printer I still think it's a neat thing. I print a few things a month from it. Still feels like a very hobbyist space. There have been some nice upgrades in some software I use for it. I don't expect much to change in this space over the next year and the average person probably won't have much use for one any time soon either.

2015 6" Action Figures

Probably 6" Funko Legacy (Like their excellent Game of Thrones Figures) of Rocketeer and Firefly sometime in mid to late 2015.

Likely to be some nice Star Wars Black 6" figures during the back half of the year. Emperor Palpatine is a noteable figure already announced for later in the year, and four Ep VII figures have been leaked.

Maybe a few of Arrow/Flash TV figures will be worth getting. Arrow, Flash, Black Canary and Malcom Merlyn stand out? But scale might be too tall as these are 7" and not 6”, plus all but Merlyn have been made before in 6" scale in their comic versions.

Not much in the way of New DC Collectible figures until at least late 2015? As most everything announced so far are characters previously done in 6".

Mattel doesn't seem to be doing much with the DC License at retail in the 6" scale outside of their more kid-friendly Total Heroes Line. Maybe something will be announced at Toy Fair, but with no cartoons or major DC movies this year, it seems unlikely there will be much beyond a Batman figure or two.

Will there be 6” action figures announced for Avengers 2 and Ant-man? Likely in store April 2015 and June 15? Toy Fair in February seems the absolute latest that those could be announced. However, there do not seem to be any announce prominent characters in either film that haven't been made in 6" already (Not counting upcoming Movie Specific costume variations of course.)

Action Figures for Fantastic Four (7/31?) Probably not as Marvel isn't interested in promoting this 20th Century Fox Film and has even cancelled the comic for now.

Happy 2015!

Sat, 25 May 2013 07:57:39 -0700
I?m not a fan of the new Flickr redesign. It?s not even that I don?t like the visual look of it.My primary beef is: without warning they completely changed the service for paying customers. I?ve payed for a Pro account for years under the assumption that paying for a service would provide a little more reliability. Flickr has shown that not to be the case, so I?m planning to use it far less frequently and probably far differently than the personal photo site of record I have been using it as. (I?m also not pleased with their likely upcoming attention/advertising model)

I was able to put all my photos into one Set and download the full size images using a free service called flickandshare.com, so I have everything safely out of the service now. Likely I will eventually set up my own simple photo gallery (and give these photos a new home) on my website at chris-karath.com. Hosting your own services and codes seem to be the most reliable method for content that you want around for years to come.

Photos that are here now, will probably continue to be here, Yahoo willing, into the future.

Since Flickr has shown itself to be of unpredictable stability, and it appears to be transforming into more a social network than a photo service, I?ll probably plan on treating it as such. If you subscribe to my account for the action figures, I?ll probably from time to time still post a picture or two of those here with links back to my own site where I?ll likely start posting more photos.

If you follow for my personal photos, following me on Twitter or my personal blog atchris-karath.com will probably be your best bet. --- Best wishes, Chris.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
I've never actually taken the full tour of the Museum. It was free today, so we went through it. It's nicely done for it's sort of thing.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:02 -0700
Those light poles to the shore should be dry land

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:01 -0700
Stairways to nowhere. Grand Rapids.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:49:00 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:59 -0700

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 13:48:58 -0700
Grand Rapids Art Museum. This display is by a new guy who just joined our team at work.

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 06:49:01 -0700

Sat, 30 Mar 2013 12:17:53 -0700
Both these guys have contributed a lot to comics. I'm not implying anything with the choice of pose. I figure in classic comic parlance though, these two comic heroes would be obligated to fight before teaming up to defeat some great evil.

Recent Blog Comments

Thread: p1825 Post by Jolloway2013-02-23 12:23:49 Hi Cris and other people who view this sight,
I just started a blog site jolloway.co.uk and I wonderd if anyone can give me any tips on blogging. I am curently using a site called word press to host me blog. I start around about a month ago and I\'m really struggling with it and if you do reply I\'m only 11 and found this sight by a photo in google Images.
-Josh
P.S. I love the background XP

Thread: p1706 Post by Chris2012-10-27 13:29:47 Fortunately, I resisted the DC/Master Bundles as they were pretty much only bundled with basic figures I already had. Had they been bundled with more unique DC figures, I might have alot more Masters figures at this point ;)

Thread: p1706 Post by De2012-10-27 13:06:27 I almost bit on Masters of the Universe when they were being bundled with DC Universe figures in the two-packs. I\'ve also liked the blending of sci-fi and fantasy but a lad only has so much room :-)

Thread: p1674 Post by T. Bass2012-10-24 20:55:50 Hi Chris:
Like you, I bought and just received an ONDA V701. Mine took 32 days (!) to arrive from China (bought from gadgetdealer.com... avoid like plague), and the box was beat to hell, but it seems to work fine ....with one exception.
That said, I like the tablet thus far, but a couple of things aren\'t flying right. One, it was advertised as having Adobe Flash ver. 11.1, but instead, mine came with 10.2. Yours? Not sure this matters, as Flash is going the way of the dodo-bird as far as Android goes.
My only real complaint thus far, and that despite trying everything I could find online, I cannot get NetFlix to work. This was/is one of the main reasons I bought it, as they advertised that it \"works with NetFlix\". I don\'t know whether it\'s the tablet, or the app that is the problem, but nonetheless, no love from NetFlix at this point.
I don\'t know if you are subscribed to Netflix, but if you are, I sure would like to know if it works for you on your V701, and if so, how did you get it going, and what settings are you\'re using to make it work? Appreciate hearing from you.
Best,
T. Bass
Applegate, Oregon

Thread: p1557 Post by davy2012-08-24 17:58:58 i kind of agree with you, and i\'m sure bale had the best intentions but the whole media circus at times is disturbing.
but if to had to pick on whether bale should have visited or not i\'d rather he visit for the sole reason that if he made any of the survivors feel good,even if it was only for the briefest moments, then it was worth it.
the victims medical and emotonals needs should be put first and if bale\'s visit helped any of them emotionally then i\'m glad